By Our Reporter
The Academic Forum of the proscribed Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), on Saturday, raised alarm over the deteriorating health condition of its Leader, Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky, and his wife, Malama Zeenah.
Spokesperson of the forum, Abdullahi Muhammad Musa, who stated this at a press briefing in Abuja, demanded for their unconditional release from detention.
“Available information reaching us revealed that the health condition of Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky and his wife Malama Zeenah Ibraheem is seriously deteriorating.
“Our concern over the deteriorating health of Sheikh Zakzaky is growing, as a person of his critical condition is not supposed to remain in incarceration.
“The Sheikh’s health review reveals that the blood lead level concentration in his body is far greater than the levels considered life threatening.
“The presence of foreign bodies and metallic pellets within brain tissues may have caused an automatic dysreflexia, thereby interfering with the normal control of physiological activities like blood pressure, temperature, cardiac activities etc,” he said.
According to Musa, the Sheikh is even at the risk of losing his sight completely.
“The Sheikh has also been suffering from a number of issues: obstructed blood flow to the heart; nerve root compression; severe visual impairment in his remaining right eye and progressive open angle glaucoma, progressive macular atrophy and other issues that can inevitably lead to permanent blindness.
“Extremely high concentration of cadmium in his blood, among other things, is also causing a lot of damages,” he added.
He queried why their leader had continued to be kept in prison with bullet shrapnel causing more harm to an already worsening situation.
The spokesperson also said Zakzaky’s wife, Zeenah, had been suffering from “severe arthritis in her knee joints, which her doctors have said can only be treated with knee replacement surgery since at least three years ago.”
According to him, she also has loose fragments of bullet pieces in her abdominal area which cause a large number of episodes of periodic life-threatening complications with her organs.
“The wheel chair-bound mother of nine is hypertensive.
“Even one of the ailments suffered by either of them constitutes a very serious medical emergency, let alone a combination of all of them,” he added.
He noted that Zakzaky had already suffered two strokes while in detention.
“Both Sheikh Zakzaky and his wife need urgent and critical interventions to salvage their health.
“In view of the deteriorating health condition of Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky and his wife Malama Zeenah Ibraheem, we are demanding for unconditional release of the couple,” he said.
Musa, who hinted that there are some sinister motives behind the government’s insistence on keeping Zakzaky in the highly congested jail in Kaduna, accused the government of allegedly engineering the aborted trip to India, even after the travel permit was granted by a court.
